Houses raided in child porn swoop
Tuesday November 06 2007
Gardai have raided homes in five counties and seized computer equipment as part of a worldwide police investigation into a child sex network.
The operation, codenamed Koala, has already resulted in 92 arrests in eight countries.
Among those detained were personnel working in trusted positions, including school teachers and swimming instructors, while 23 children, aged between nine and 16, have been identified.
There were no arrests in this country but five men were interviewed by detectives from the national bureau of criminal investigation.
The garda raids were on houses in Mayo, Westmeath, Wicklow, Clare and Galway. During the searches detectives from the bureau's domestic violence and sexual assault unit recovered a number of computers, CDs and DVDs.
Gardai said last night that the equipment was still being forensically examined.
The outcome of that examination is expected to determine if there will be formal arrests here and a file prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions.
Arrested
In Northern Ireland, the PSNI said last night they had arrested three men in connection with Operation Koala. Garda inquiries into the involvement of Irish suspects in the child sex network have been under way here since last July but were only disclosed officially yesterday after a combined Europol-Eurojust announcement in The Hague that the network had been smashed.
Koala was launched last year when a child abuse video was discovered in Australia. It had been produced in Belgium -- and a Belgian suspect and two victims were identified.
After follow-up inquiries, the producer of the video, a 42-year-old Italian national with a private studio in the Ukraine, was arrested.
Europol stated, "The keys to the success of this operation are the provision of valuable data by member states and Interpol and crime analysis for more than a year carried out by specialists in dealing with online child sex abuse cases at Europol and the judicial co-ordination carried out by Eurojust."
Europol's director Max-Peter Ratzel said: "This investigation has been extremely time consuming but the fact that the perpetrators behind these outrageous assaults on children are now facing justice makes every hour used worth it."
- Tom Brady, Security Editor
